You may have noticed that I've not posted much on my blog lately (until tonight). And the astute reader may notice that my list of employers (on the right side) has changed to reflect a new employer...which, in part, explains why I've been too busy to update my blog.
For quite awhile, I've been growing increasingly frustrated and disheartened with my job at Michaels Stores. In short, despite my team's successes there was a move afoot to stifle our agile ways in favor of more rigid software development. I fought it for a long time, but I finally became jaded and decided it wasn't worth the frustration. I began looking for new work.
In my search, I talked to several great companies, including (no names mentioned)...
- A well-known technology company who is best known for their application server.
- A well-known consulting company who is best known for their very popular open-source framework.
- A small educational software company that is only 10 minutes from my house.
I also considered going into independent consulting and at The Spring Experience, several people handed me their business cards asking if I'd be interested in joining their company. All of these appealed to me but...
In the end, it was my No-Fluff/Just-Stuff colleague and friend Glenn Vanderburg who got me in the door at Countrywide Financial. The drive to work is a bit long, but the team I'm on is great. The ironic thing is that I'm on a team at Countrywide that is revolutionizing software development within the company--I'm on a team that has management backing to do what I failed to pull off at Michaels.
I'm excited to be there. I am met with new challenges in this job, but they're the good kind of challenges...the kind I can learn and grow from.
